Your conversion rate is the percentage of people that make an enquiry about your band that then go on to book you.

The majority of bands I speak with with don’t know what this number is. Yet it’s arguably the second most important number you need to know after ‘total bookings’.

When I’m with my one on one coaching clients and we look a little deeper into the numbers we’ll discover an average conversion rate of 10% to 15%. They always guess it’s much higher than that.

I’m going to state the obvious here a bit it’s worth it.

That means that for every 20 leads you generate LESS than 2 go on to book you!

Think about the story behind those numbers – 20 people have been to your website, social media accounts, spoken to a friend about you or seen you somewhere online. They liked what they saw and took a minute or two out of their very busy day to either fill in the contact form on your website or pick up the phone and call you.

Do you think you could do a lot better than get less than two of them to book you?

You bet you can!!

And it’s really not as hard as you might think it is.

After all they must have liked something about you to make the effort of enquiring about you.

Before we look at some of the reasons they aren’t coming back to you lets debunk the big myth that ‘They know where we are and what we do. If they wanted to book us they would have done it by now’

In my experience this is for the most part just NOT TRUE.

Lets look at some of the reasons why they aren’t responding to your emails.

1. They forgot they even made an enquiry

I know it seems ridiculous but picture the scenario. Bride and groom have a wedding ‘to do’ list as long as your arm.

One dull Wednesday night they decide to ‘sort out the band’.

They get online and start furiously googling to find bands.

They’re immediately totally overwhelmed by the choice on offer.

They pick a handful of bands they like the look of, fill in the contact form and hit submit.

Then what?

Then life got in the way, that’s what.

They’ll have forgotten they even requested a quote from you come the weekend.

Ok so you do the right thing and send a timely response back outlining what you can offer and at what price.

But they don’t respond.

Guess what? Life is still pretty busy for them.

Not only that but they’ve got 10 other wedding suppliers to get sorted out.

Whose job do you think it is to remind them you exist and they liked what they saw in your band?

2. It’s in their spam folder

This is a massive problem that’s only going to get worse.

The majority of private clients that I deal with use a personal web based email. You know the biggies – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc.

These providers are doing everything they can to make sure your email doesn’t get seen.

‘Doesn’t get seen’ means putting you in the spam folder or if you’re Gmail the ‘Promotions Folder’

I cannot tell you how many times I will send a quote, follow up 2 or 3 days later to check if they received it and be met with a ‘no’. When I ask them to check their spam folder 100% of the time it is in there.

Email providers don’t treat unknown emails kindly.

Its your job to make sure your emailed quote gets read by the recipient.

But how?

Here’s a ninja tip: send a text message to the prospect to let them know you’ve sent a quote. NB: Tell them to look out for it in their email inbox and that it’s coming from you (use the exact name they will see in their ‘From’ column). Also tell them that they should check their spam folder if they don’t see it in their inbox.

3. You didn’t give them a good enough reason to reply to you

“People are silently begging to be lead”

This is a quote by the marketing legend Jay Abraham and it’s one I have pinned up on my wall and made sure is now in my DNA!

Why?

Have you ever had any work done on your house? A loft conversion or extension for example?

If you’ve never done it before then it’s a scary and daunting prospect.

In short you haven’t got a clue what to expect, what the process is and what the potential pitfalls are.

The majority of your prospective clients or at last the private ones have never booked a band before.

To a greater or lesser extent they feel apprehensive and unsure about what to do next.

In fact it’s why most ask how much you cost as their first question – they just don’t know what other question to ask.

So how grateful do you think they’d be to have someone ‘take them by the hand’ and lead them gently towards the result they wanted while ensuring they feel comfortable, safe and don’t make the mistakes others have made?

Answer’s obvious, right?

So you need to come up with some offers that give your prospect a good reason to reply to your quote that isn’t just ‘book us’.

These offers need to lead your prospect along a path towards booking you.

Booking a band is not a two step process ie 1. make enquiry 2. book band.

There are steps along the way that the prospects needs to go through.

Think about how you can help them take each step.

The obvious ones are to invite them to a live show or send them a DVD.

You can take it to the next level and create a pdf guide that helps answer their FAQs and provides them with a useful resource.

Creating these offers gives them a reason to respond to you and you a reason to follow up with them.

I hope this has given you something to think about and take some action on.

Everything you do while marketing your band should exist to help drive a higher level of engagement with your prospect.

Sending a quote on email, then sitting and waiting for a response is just not going to cut it these days.

It’s ultimately your job to remind them that you exist and that they liked your band enough to make an enquiry.

By following up on your initial quote you will not be seen as a some kind of pest.

In fact they’ll even thank you for taking the time to remind them.

The Amazing 9 Word Email That Revives Dead Leads

Action Step!!

This is an idea I stole from another great marketer, Dean Jackson.

It’s the most simple yet effective thing you can do to revive any dead leads you have and start booking gigs.

1. Collect up all the leads from the last 3 or 4 months that haven’t converted to bookings.

2. Send them all an email. In the Subject line put their first name.

3. In the body of the email write – Hi first name. Are you still looking for a band for your wedding? Brad

4. NB; don’t include anything else in the email – No signature. No sales pitch. No offer. Just send that email.

The response I get from that is amazing.

Some people will tell you they’ve booked. Which is great. At least you know.

But other will tell you they are still looking. That’s your cue to start the conversation again.

Leave a comment and tell me how you got on with this strategy.

Do you have any other reasons why you think prospects don’t respond to your emails? Leave a comment below and let me know.